Just How Engrained is Your Urge to Write?

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inkkognito

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Setting aside professional writing, and looking at it in general terms, just how engrained is your personal urge to write? What if someone told you tomorrow, "You can no longer create stories (or articles, or blog entries, or whatever else you might do)." Could you comply with that, or would you still have to find ways to let your Muse run free?

Personally, writing isn't that much farther below breathing for me. As a kid, I created stories even before I could do it physically. I wrote for fun till I was old enough to set my sites on doing it professionally. Even when I put my freelancing career on hold, I had my corporate work as an outlet. When that ended, I started blogging as a pre-cursor to returning to freelancing. Even if I knew I would never sell another article again, I'd still be pounding my keyboard regularly.

It reminds me of a science fiction story I read once. The protagonist is a writer who has been jailed as a political prisoner, and he is denied any writing materials. He lies in bed in his cell and imagines writing words on the ceiling. If I were denied paper and pen (or laptop or whatever), that would probably be me too. How about you?
 

A. J. Luxton

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You know that scene in Sandman where the writer guy, cursed with unrelenting creative inspiration after it is discovered that he has kidnapped and enslaved the muse Calliope, ends up writing on the walls with blood from his fingers?

I sympathized.
 

soleary

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Writing, for me, is a wonderful addiction. I wouldn't give it up for anything, nor do I think I could. I even rewrite the lyrics to songs when I'm in the car. I'm spend time daily telling stories or collecting them from friends and strangers. Eventually, it all ends up in a line or two somewhere in what I'm writing. One friend gave me the title of my newest book project in a conversation a few days ago. Writing isn't something I do. A writer is a big part of who I am.
 

WittyandorIronic

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Although I don't know if I have ever really consciously separated the two before, I am much more of a story teller than a writer. I go for long periods without writing, but I rarely go a day without telling a story. I love gossip, call friends, recount entertaining memories, discuss the funny-thing-that-happened-on-the-way-to-the-store stories ALL the time. Discounting my surly nature which would demand to write IMMEDIATELY as soon as I lacked the ability, if I was denied writing I would be good for probably somewhere around six months before the urge to write a story down reoccurred. Probably a year before it really started bothering me.
No story telling? Maybe 2 hours.
I regularly take breaks from writing for work, kids, life. When other things become more important or I hit a roadblock, I turn it off for quite awhile.
I have noticed that this 'turn off' time is shortening each time I do it, and my writing time inversely increases. When I first joined the military, I turned it off for nearly 2 years. When I started my own business, 6-8 months. When I started my new job, 4 months.
hmmm.... It will be interesting to see how long the next break lasts.
 

Phaeal

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de Sade in Quills also writes with his own blood when deprived of ink. Then he takes it a step farther and, dying, writes with his own excrement. (Now that's a crappy first draft.)

Well, if someone tells me I can't write, I'm just going to write more. I'm a contrarian. Rejection and prohibitions spur me on. ;)
 

KTC

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I'd write in the wind and on water.
 

kct webber

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I remember sitting beneath a tree in an African jungle when I was in the military. It was raining and I was sitting in six inches of mud under a poncho. I sat there for hours scribbling in a pocket notebook by the dull green glow of a chem-light. I had been soaked to the bone for three days. I hadn't slept in nearly four and I had a loaded machine gun propped in my lap--I used it as a desk. Despite being in one of the least hospitable situations in the world, I wrote two chapters of a novel.

My need to write is very strong.
 

Polenth

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Creating stories in my head is ingrained. Writing them down isn't. It's nice to express them somehow, but there are other ways to do that (verbal storytelling, painting, music, etc.)
 

Claudia Gray

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My need to tell stories is very strong -- I've done it in one form or another as long as I can remember. However, I've only learned to marshal that in to writing within the past seven years or so.
 

Beyondian

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My father - with the best of intentions - tried to tell me that I didn't have to write, and that I could always stop.
That is one of the most horrifying things anyone has ever said to me. Possibly more unnerving was that I couldn't get him to understand that I can't just stop writing. My urge to write is very strong. I write at work, on trains, on busses, in cafes, at home, and on the ferry. I really am not certain if I could actually stop now. I'm pretty sure it's become such a habit that I'd find myself doing it automatically.
Though I could probably just make up stories in my head, or convey them verbally, I get a great deal of satisfaction out of sculpting with the written word. Not to mention the fact that I have a lousy memory, and it is really frustrating when you can't remember the plot point you spent several hours working out - in your head...
 

inkkognito

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My father - with the best of intentions - tried to tell me that I didn't have to write, and that I could always stop
My Mommie Dearest was a bastion of support. When I showed her a clip of my first article, placed carefully in a page protector inside a notebook, she said, "Why did you buy a whole notebook? You're never going to fill it."

Her nasty little jibe was perfect motivation. I don't get hurt by rejection; it only spurs me harder. I filled that notebook and several others, and never again did I ever show her another piece I'd written. She died not knowing that I became a decently successful freelancer.

I still have that 30-something-year-old notebook even tho' the cover is torn and coming apart now, and it still houses my first articles. I'll never throw it away; it's a symbol that I'm truly a writer.
 

Beyondian

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:D Telling us not to do it, or that we can't do it is like the red flag to the bull sometimes, isn't it?
I know logically what my father was trying to tell me: i.e. that I shouldn't feel 'fated' to be The Author, and that I have choice. But - eh - explaining things like the pressure of characters who wanna get out and storylines that just won't leave you alone to non-writers is a bit tricky.
He's always supportive... just finds it hard to understand his writer daughter sometimes I guess.
Good for you on making it and proving the critics wrong!
 

jannawrites

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shh... I'm thinking...
Writing is as much a part of me as the brown hair with which I was born. And it'd be hard for me to part with either.
 

Chasing the Horizon

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Creating characters and worlds is very ingrained for me. Writing them down, probably not so much (considering it never occurred to me to do such a thing until I was nineteen). But if I'm going to be thinking about them 24/7, why not write them down and have something to show for it? Of course I could stop writing, but I couldn't stop thinking about writing.
 

steveg144

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I don't have a choice about writing. The Muse and I have come to an agreement that works for both of us. I will write as much as I possibly can until my powers fail me at some point in my frail old dotage. In exchange, The Muse has promised that she will not sic The Furies on me to bedevil me and drive me mad.
 

aonarach

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Setting aside professional writing, and looking at it in general terms, just how engrained is your personal urge to write? What if someone told you tomorrow, "You can no longer create stories (or articles, or blog entries, or whatever else you might do)."

they would change their minds as soon as they realized without my pen and paper (or laptop) i never shut up.
 

Sassee

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If I were denied my urge to write I would start drawing. If I were denied the paper and pencil (or whatever drawing utensil) due to the "risk" of writing when I shouldn't, then I would start talking incessantly. I am not a very fun person when I can neither write nor draw.
 

DragonHeart

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Strong enough to wake me up in the middle of the night to write down scenes. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it's impossible to ignore. I tried once but ended up staying awake for three hours running the words over and over in my head until I finally got up, turned the computer on, and type the first draft out. Only then could I go back to sleep.

Even though I don't write nearly as much as I should, I'm constantly in story mode. Always working on stories in my mind or going over stories I've read recently. It's difficult to disconnect from; I've theorized that this may be why I don't have dreams I can remember, because the only time my imagination shuts off is when I'm asleep.

~DragonHeart~
 

Wrathman

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My Mommie Dearest was a bastion of support. When I showed her a clip of my first article, placed carefully in a page protector inside a notebook, she said, "Why did you buy a whole notebook? You're never going to fill it."

Her nasty little jibe was perfect motivation. I don't get hurt by rejection; it only spurs me harder. I filled that notebook and several others, and never again did I ever show her another piece I'd written. She died not knowing that I became a decently successful freelancer.

I still have that 30-something-year-old notebook even tho' the cover is torn and coming apart now, and it still houses my first articles. I'll never throw it away; it's a symbol that I'm truly a writer.

Now that is a story that needs to be told.
 
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